HWA1 Nightwail (Basic)

Under the ruins of Barleycorn Monastery, a tunnel leads one thousand miles downward. Through it a rescue mission into the Broken Lands turns much stranger. Much more serious. For the trail leads to the Hollow World.

Launch your D&D game players into fabulous lost-worlds adventure across the Hollow World! Travel the Azcan Empire. Explore the secret labyrinth of the Great Pyramid in Chitlacan. Fly to the core of the world and enter the Smoking Mirror, before the monstrous Prince Kano enacts his devastating scheme? a scheme called: Nightwail!

Product History

HWA1: "Nightwail" (1990), by Allen Varney, is the first of the Hollow World Adventures and also the first of the Blood Brethren trilogy. It was published in October 1990.

Origins (I): Evolving Adventures. Beginning with the November 1978 publication of B1: "In Search of the Unknown" (1978), TSR carefully organized almost all of its Basic D&D (1977, 1981, 1983) adventures into the B, X, C, M, and I lines; each adventure clearly noted its levels of play and thus the set it was intended for. Most of those lines ended in 1987 when TSR instead began publishing the "GAZ" series of setting books. A few years later, B11: "King's Festival" (1989) and B12: "Queen's Harvest" (1989) ended the long-running series.

But that doesn't mean that TSR was done with Basic D&D adventures. Instead, they created new adventures that complemented the Gazetteer line by being set even more strongly in the Known World. The first of these was DDA1: "Arena of Thyatis" (1990). It then made sense that the Hollow World would get its own series of setting-focused adventures following the release of the Hollow World Campaign Set (1990). The first of these was HWA1: "Nightwail" (1990).

Origins (II): Creating the Blood Brethren Trilogy. Author Varney had a pretty free hand when creating his adventures. He would end up designing a trilogy of adventures that spanned three major civilizations in the Hollow World and offered an epic conclusion. His original intent was to make the modules playable in any order once the PCs arrived in the Hollow World — which is why they highlight three different schemes necessary to carry out Thanatos' master plan. However, Varney says that effort was pointless, and it makes sense to just play them in order.

Genre Tropes. The Hollow World Campaign Set returned Basic D&D to some of its pulp genre origins, a trope that "Nightwail" continues … when it actually gets to the Hollow World. Once there, characters travel through huge caverns, discover ancient pyramids, see herds of dinosaurs, and foil evil ceremonies. These genre tropes would continue through the entire trilogy, as was appropriate for the Hollow World.

Adventure Tropes. "Nightwail" is a classic introductory adventure. Its beginning is intentionally mundane. The PCs adventure on the surface world, hunting a MacGuffin: two hostage princes. After encountering events and engaging in investigation, the PCs travel through the wilderness to a simple monastery crawl. Only then are the players plunged into the extraordinary lands beneath the Known World.

Exploring the Hollow World. "Nightwail" is the only "HWA" adventure that also details the surface of the Known World. Players begin their journey in Glantri, then move on to the Broken Lands. In the Hollow World, the focus turns to Azca, the Aztec-influenced land that would be further detailed several months later in HWR1: "Sons of Azca" (1991). In all of these lands, the focus is on adventuring. The most useful detailing of these lands probably occurs in chapter 5, which involves an adventuresome traversal from the Known World to the Hollow World.

NPCs of Note. The major antagonist of the Blood Brethren trilogy is Thanatos, the greatest immortal of Entropy in the Known World. He'd been mentioned in numerous previous books, including Dawn of the Emperors (1989) and Hollow World Campaign Set (1990), but this was his first starring role.

The eponymous Blood Brethren are Simm of the Grasping Dark and Koresh Teyd, Nightkiller. They're named after two famous proponents of the Hollow Earth theory, John Cleves Symmes Jr. (1780-1829) and Cyrus ("Koresh") Teed (1839-1908).

The Cutting Room Floor. An encounter involving an ambush on the road to the Broken Lands was written as part of this adventure, but instead appeared as a side trek in Dungeon #28 (March/April 1991).

About the Creators. Freelancer Varney had previously worked for Steve Jackson Games, but was now writing for a variety of publishers. His TSR work started with M4: "Five Coins for a Kingdom" (1987) and now continued with a whole trilogy of supplements.

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.

These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.

Original electronic format

These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.

File Information

Watermarked PDF

Adobe DRM-protected PDF

These eBooks are protected by Adobe's Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. To use them, you must activate your Adobe Reader software. Click here for more details.

Watermarked PDF

These eBooks are digitally watermarked to signify that you are the owner. A small message is added to the bottom of each page of the document containing your name and the order number of your eBook purchase.

Warning: If any books bearing your information are found being distributed illegally, then your account will be suspended and legal action may be taken against you.